Prep Sports: Star athletes find playing one sport helps in another

Greg Alber was determined to win a state wrestling title after finishing second as a junior. So after Dakota was eliminated from state football playoff contention 25 years ago, the starting end quit at midseason to begin working out for wrestling.

Greg Alber was determined to win a state wrestling title after finishing second as a junior. So after Dakota was eliminated from state football playoff contention 25 years ago, the starting end quit at midseason to begin working out for wrestling.

Alber did win his state wrestling title, but found it awkward six months later when he showed up at football coach Terry Werntz’s door to date his daughter.

“At that age, you are driven by girls,” said Alber, who wound up marrying Werntz’s daughter. “I was able to overcome the awkwardness, but the first couple of Christmases were a little rough.”

Alber says he made a mistake to quit football, even though he got the wrestling result he wanted.

“Abandoning ship wasn’t the right thing to do,” Alber said. “It wouldn’t have set me back to finish up the football season.”

It might even have pushed him ahead. Many coaches say the best way to improve at one sport is to play another.

Yet the pressure to concentrate on one sport is far greater now than it was in 1988, with many sports offering chances to compete year-round. “There is more expected of kids today than at any time I’ve been around,” said Jerry Lano, who has coached Dakota football for 24 years since replacing Werntz.

Lano, who has won state three times in the past eight years, would rather his players wrestled or played basketball or baseball in the offseason than simply lift weights and train for football.

“The kids that want to lift weights and get ready for one sport, you never push yourself as hard as a coach can push you,” Lano said. “I’d rather have them out for a sport every season. Playing other sports also teach you mental toughness and how to come from behind. Even the guys working hardest in the weight room are missing some things that only games can teach you.”

Football and wrestling are often regarded as the perfect crossover sports. Dakota’s first undefeated football champions were made up primarily of the school’s undefeated state champion wrestling team. Perry Giardini, who coached East to a 1986 state football title and led the E-Rabs to a third-place dual wrestling finish in 1998, the highest ever by a NIC-10 team, said his five greatest offensive linemen were all state medal-winning heavyweight wrestlers.

“Football players duck their heads because a collision is coming,” Giardini said. “That’s a natural instinct. People don’t run into things with their head up and their eyes open. They drop their heads. But wrestlers are taught from the beginning to keep their heads up. They see where they are going.”

“In wrestling,” said Ty Harmston, the 195-pound Class 1A state wrestling champ and a tight end/defensive end on Stockton’s state runner-up football team, “you are in more of a power position if you keep your head up; you can drive and pick someone up. If you get your head down, you get your head stuck in the mat. So if you get used to that, it’s instinct to do it in football as well.”

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Stockton fullback/linebacker Logan Staver, the 182-pound state wrestling champ, said wrestlers make for tougher football teams.

“You can definitely tell which ones are the wrestlers,” Staver said. “They are more physical. When you play both those sports, you are physical all the time.”

Track and cross country are other naturals. Sometimes, it’s virtually the same event. Freeport junior Ellie Willging was the NIC-10 cross country champion last fall and finished fourth in the state in Class 2A in the 1,600 and 3,200 as a sophomore. But even some star sprinters and mid-distance runners take cross country turns. East sprinter and hurdler Logan Tillman ran cross country. So did Hononegah sprinter/long jumper Patrice Jones and Class 3A state 800-meter champion Courtney Clayton.

But playing almost any sport can help out in another.

“I’m the son of a coach. Dad coached basketball and tennis and he said they were great crossover sports because the footwork was almost identical,” Freeport girls track coach Dave Roloff said. “Tennis and football also have a lot of the same footwork. It’s bizarre; you can carry this conversation over into almost any sport. A lot of swimmers are distance runners.”

For anecdotal proof of a tennis connection, look at Justin VanWambeke. He plays No. 1 doubles on the Harlem tennis team, led the NIC-10 in scoring (18.0 points) during basketball season and was third in passing (1,401 yards) as a football quarterback.

“A lot of the tennis drills we do are quickness drills that help every sport,” VanWambeke said. “Every year, I keep getting faster from playing different sports.”

“Give me any basketball player,” Harlem tennis coach Bill Dredge said, “and I will make him better, because you have to keep your feet alive. You can’t compete on the tennis court or the basketball court without good footwork.”

Some crossover potential is obvious, such as the speed learned in track.

“Every football coach worth his weight should get all his skill players on the track team,” Harlem girls track coach Michael Oliveri said. “And the offensive linemen should be throwing and working on their coordination. Every football player should be out for track.”

Even golf can help.

“Golf is more mental than anything, so it helps with your thinking in basketball and baseball,” said Eastland’s Ty Hartman, who played on Eastland teams that went to state in both basketball and baseball and played on the golf team for three years before missing his senior season after having knee surgery.

“Golf helps you analyze everything and think things through. That transfers over to when I pitch in baseball and how I am going to attack the batter, or in basketball, how I am going to guard the guy. It really sharpens your mind.”

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Hartman also said baseball and basketball have crossover appeal.

“Your defensive shuffle or slide in basketball is the same as leading off a base and taking off running,” Hartman said.

Some athletes worry about injuring themselves in a sport that isn’t their specialty. Roloff once dropped future Big Ten swimmer Emily Pisula from the track team, when she unexpectedly came out to join her friends and ran the mile, at midseason “because she worked so hard I worried she would hurt herself.” But Harlem counterpart Oliveri said doing something different can keep you healthy because “repetitive injuries occur when you do the same things over and over again.”

“Playing the other sports gives my body a break and helps relax it,” said Hartman, who will play basketball at Division III Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa.

“You get repetition injuries if you use certain muscles. If you use all your muscles, it doesn’t happen as much,” said Brannick, who broke most of Aquin’s passing records this fall and will play for Division III North Central College in Naperville.

“Every time you start a new season, new muscles are sore, especially the jump from football to basketball,” Brannick said. “It doesn’t seem like it would be different muscles; it’s all running and jumping. But it’s a different kind of endurance that you need. In football, you get a rest between every play. In basketball, it can be continuous motion for two and three minutes at a time.”

Anything that teaches stopping and starting and reacting and changing direction suddenly can carry over into almost any sport.

Dakota’s first football champions were fueled by coach Pete Alber’s wrestlers. The biggest stars on the Indians’ second football champions two years later were from then-coach Brian Benning’s basketball team.

That second championship team might not have been as tough as the first, but threw and caught better and ran outside more — and finished an identical 14-0.

“The skill sets varied,” said Benning, who was also an assistant coach on the three title-winning football teams.

“The wrestling-background players were very tough-minded and physical. The basketball players were used to playing in more space, which opens up the passing game and the perimeter run game.

“The faster, quicker, change-of-direction type of guy is a huge part of being an athlete. The ability to start and stop and accelerate at a high level. Whether it’s a baseball infielder catching a ground ball or a basketball player on defense or a tennis player, you have to take a few steps as fast as possible.”